VoltDB Blog » Tim Callaghan

Building a Cluster on a Limited Budget

Tim Callaghan — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 18:52:57 +0000

In April 2010 we built a “budget cluster” to facilitate additional VoltDB testing (we already had a 12-node Dell R710 cluster). The requirement was to build a complete 6 server VoltDB cluster for less than the cost of a single R710 (much less actually). With a budget of $4,000 we decided to buy the individual parts and build the machines by hand. Everything was purchased from Amazon, NewEgg, and MonoPrice.

Parts for each Server
- CPU = AMD Phenom II X4 945 ($150.99)
- Memory (8GB) = Crucial Technology CT2CP25664AA800 4GB Memory Kit (2 x $88.99)
- Hard … Read more

Franken-Switch

Tim Callaghan — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 19:04:56 +0000

I did quite a bit of testing on one of the major VoltDB v1.2 features, Network Fault Protection. When enabled this feature detects a network partition and ensures that we don’t allow “split-brain” behavior (a single VoltDB cluster splitting into two independent clusters).

As I planned my test strategy I had two ideas:

1. Buy a switch that supports VLANs, since multiple VLANs on a switch should allow me to partition two groups of machines. (So I’d have to read reviews of various switches, purchase the switch hardware, wonder if I bought the best switch for the money, read the … Read more

SGI/VoltDB Benchmark- More Details

Tim Callaghan — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 19:07:39 +0000

Yesterday’s press release documented a 30 node SGI Rackable Cluster running VoltDB achieving 3.4 million transactions per second (at 10ms latency) running the “Voter” application.

Impressive numbers, indeed. And the numbers are even more interesting when you understand the transactions. Each Voter transaction consists of: 2 selects 1 insert (table with an index) 2 updates (materialized views, each with an index) Therefore, the SGI Cluster was performing 17 million SQL statements per second!

Tim Callaghan
Sr. Technical Consultant
VoltDB… Read more

Overclocking Your Database Servers

Tim Callaghan — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 19:09:46 +0000

It seems like I’ve been programming forever (we’re talking TS-1000, TRS-80, and Commodore64). I’ve always been looking to improve the performance of my programs, especially database applications. Better performance can usually be attributed to one of the following:

New Hardware – [insert name of favorite hardware vendor] has just released new server technology that incorporates improved [RAM | CPU | Disk | RAID Controller]. At some point we’d purchase one of the new servers, install the OS and RDBMS software, restore a large database for benchmarking, and run scripts to test the performance. Performance always improved but it was never

“VoltDB for SQL Developers” on YouTube

Tim Callaghan — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 19:22:15 +0000

I presented VoltDB to the Boston MySQL User Group on 9/13, focusing on VoltDB technology from a SQL Developer’s point of view.

The 2 hour video recording is available on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gjg8LTEaLbc.

Check it out, there were lots of great questions. I recommend it for VoltDB novices and users alike.

Tim Callaghan
Sr. Technical Consultant
VoltDB… Read more

Transactions on a Budget

Tim Callaghan — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 19:24:10 +0000

We hand-built a “cluster” at VoltDB to perform a variety of long running tests. In this test cluster, one of the nodes performs all client application activity while the other 5 serve as VoltDB servers. The cost of the entire setup was under $3500 (six machines with 8GB RAM, 2 UPSs, and an 8-port switch). I’ll provide more technical details of the cluster hardware in a future blog entry.

After moving into our new office I kicked off my favorite test suite that includes a data generator, an export client (writing data to the file system), and a client that